This study was performed in order to clarify species composition, biomass and distribution pattern of zooplankton community(stressed on the indicator species), and to investigate the relationship between zooplankters and environmental factors of the study area.
The East Sea is located on the east of the Korean Peninsula and attached of Pacific Ocean which keeps the scope of the nation of circumference. The East Sea keeps the Mediterranean Sea character as the sea along the coast of northwest Pacific Ocean which has hydraulic mean depth about 1,500m(maximum 3,700m). It has many similarity an anti-close geography quality as tabloid edition of Pacific Ocean, although it being besieged in the Korean Peninsula, Japanese archipelago and the Siberia continent(Mun etc., 1996).
Area A has the highest temperature, salinity and biomass and also high species diversity. Area B has high biomass of appeared species whereas species diversity is low. Area C has low temperature, low species diversity and also biomass because of cold current around.
Nutritive salts is seems to be public characteristic in all study area. It has exhaustion in the surface, but it increase when it is going deeper.
Copepods is the dominant species in this study area and calanus sinicus is the best dominant species. The East-Sea is very different from the Yellow-Sea or the South-Sea. It has character of open ocean. Zooplankton of East-Sea appears that community characteristic to be with current of the flow of the sea. So that the East-Sea has low appearance volume.
Euphusiid in and Noctiluca is dominant in the Area A. That is result which Area A is subject to Kuroshio.
For East-Sea study, it need to be continuous that seasonal variation and also ecological characteristic of zooplankton in the East-Sea.